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THE BRITISH EMPIRE 

AND 

A LEAGUE OF PEACE 

BY 

George Burton Adams 



New Haven, Conn: 
The Harty Musch Press, Inc. 



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THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND A LEAGUE OF PEACE 

BY GEORGE BURTON ADAMS 



Almost certainly at the close of the war a serious attempt will be 
made to render its results premanent by establishing some kind of an 
international arrangement for the security of peace. What kind has 
been as yet but little discussed.. The obvious difficulty of finding the 
best form for such an alliance and the uncertainty of result from any 
form not carefully studied, justify immediate discussion of possibilities 
and objections. 

There are at present before the world only two possibilities for this 
purpose. One is the League to Enforce Peace. I do not mean necessar- 
ily that particular plan but I use the name as typical of all plans based 
upon treaties or definite agreements defining the objects and methods 
of the league and marking out the scope of its action. The other, created 
not by a series of defining clauses but by common ideals and purposes, 
is an alliance of all the English-speaking nations and of such other 
like-minded nations as might be willing to join them. I do not propose 
in this article to advocate one of these plans as opposed to the other. 
There is no real opposition between them. Both could exist together 
and very likely will. I will merely point out one advantage of the latter 
plan. There can be no doubt but that a league based upon common ideas 
of policy, and common standards of international right and wrong will 
possess far higher flexibility and freedom of judgment and action. 
Definitive treaties however free must restrict by the very fact that they 
create and define. I wish rather here to show that an alliance of ideals 
and common standards is now almost in existence and that very little 
needs still to be done to give it effective form. 

All the English-speaking nations except one belong now and Jiave 
always belonged to a single political organization, the British Empire. 
The United States is not a member of this organization. But its area 
and population, its developed resources and capitalized wealth, make it 
very necessary to the league. On its side it is just beginning to awaken 
to the close similarity in ideals and standards of international conduct 
which exists between it and the other members of the group. The 
general recognition of this similarity, which cannot be long delayed, 
is the essential and necessary foundation of a common policy. Such an 
alliance must be largely tacit and informal, made very likely by a com- 
mon understanding rather than by a treaty. It must grow out of natural 
conditions and not be artificially made. Therefore there must be among 
all its members a very widespread agreement upon the ultimate con- 
trolling motives of action and a common conviction as to the objects to 
be sought, and these agreements and convictions must be so well known 
by all that they are securely trusted.. If this knowledge and confidence 



cannot be obtained, we must fall back upon a league artificially made 
bj' treaties as the best we can do, for without them no bond of action 
which has its roots in living forces is possible. 

The means of reaching this understanding I am also going to omit. 
1 do so in confidence that the course of. events will bring it about with- 
out the necessit}^ of argument. If the war lasts as long as now seems 
likely, millions of our young men and women are going to be brought 
into close contact with our allies, especially with those who speak Eng- 
lish. We are going to stand with them in places which try the metal of 
which men are made and under conditions which strip off all disguse 
.ind reveal unmistakably character and motive. We are going to learn 
to know one another in a few months as would not be possible in a gen- 
eration of the slow times of peace. If also the war ends with the victory 
we believe is coming, the conferences that will be necessary to formulate 
a just settlement will reveal the international standards and purposes of 
nations, the national mind and will, beyond the possibility of mistake. 
And nobody among us who reads and thinks at all is going to escape the 
conclusions which will be formed. Whoever has studied the growth of 
opinion in the English-speaking world during the last twenty-five years 
may leave this difficulty of bringing about the necessary understanding 
of one another to the work of time with perfect confidence as to the 
final result. 

Another difficulty — to find the proper form of organization — is far 
more serious. I have said that all the English-speaking nations except 
the United States are now members of a common political organization, 
but it is not an organization of the right kind., It is still in political 
form an Empire. That is, in the field we are concerned with, the field 
of international relations, one of the nations makes decisions and de- 
termines policy, and the others have no recognized way of influencing 
tlie determination which they assist in carrying out. So long as this 
fact continues, one of these nations rules in this field to the exclusion 
of the others, and so long the organization is imperial, even if the 
sovereign is a parliament and not a man. There is beginning a fashion 
of speaking of the British Commonwealth of Nations instead of the 
British Empire, but the new name denotes in international relations an 
aspiration for the future rather than something at present really true. 
So long as each nation is not allowed its proportionate share in making 
decisions, nothing exists which can be truly called a Commonwealth of 
Nations, nothing which is in any proper sense a federation. 

Plainly in this field a reorganization is demanded, but the problem of 
forming a workable union in foreign affairs for the British Common- 
wealth of Nations is in all essentials the problem of forming a workable 
league of peace for all English-speaking nations. If there is ever dis- 
covered a workable form for one of these groups, it will be a workable 
form for the other, for the problem is fundamentally the same in each 



case. So far as this problem concerns the British Empire men have 
worked upon it consciously, with many differing proposals and much 
discussion, for half a century. Indeed it is a hundred and fifty years 
since the first suggestion for its solution was made, though with some- 
what less consciousness of the exact problem to be solved. But the 
plans proposed have been exclusively along a single line. The task at 
which men have labored has been to find some means for the representa- 
tion of the outlying Dominions in a central parliament of the Empire, 
either in the existing parliament of the British Isles or in an imperial 
parliament.. Even the latest proposal of an imperial organization, the 
most carefully elaborated that has ever been presented and based upon a 
very wide collection of opinions, insists upon the necessity of an imperial 
parliament. 

It is not strange that a central parliament should seem to British 
students of the problem indispensible. The essential feature of the 
British system, the control of the executive by the legislature through a 
cabinet of responsible ministers, is so successful in practice and so 
thoroughly democratic, allowing the quickest action of public opinion 
upon the central government of any political machinery yet devised, that 
it may well seem that no British government can exist without it. And 
yet there can be no doubt but that such a conclusion overlooks three im- 
portant facts. First, that the alliance to be formed is a commonwealth 
of nations, not a commonwealth of provinces. Second, that within a 
commonwealth of nations internal legislation, making laws which are 
binding upon all the members alike, is not merely out of place but dan- 
gerous. Third, the proposal overlooks the experience of the United 
States. 

1. To call the alliance to be formed even within the British Empire 
a commonwealth of nations is not a misnomer. The five Dominions 
usually counted, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and 
Newfoundland, are practically now independent nations so far as the 
legislation of any imperial parliament is concerned. In saying this I am 
not overlooking the continued survival of the signs and forms of an 
earlier legislative dependence which was more real. Enabling acts are 
still sometimes necessary; colonial acts may still be disallowed; the 
British parliament may still legislate in regard to some matters of in- 
tercolonial trade; appeals still lie under certain conditions from colonial 
decisions to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. 
But it is a commonplace of knowledge throughout the Empire that all 
the survivals of that earlier dependence which still exist are formal and 
technical rather than real. So true is this that a student of imperial 
affairs has declared that the Dominions have been granted every item of 
self-government upon which they have insisted including the regulation 
of immigration and of commercial relations, and that if anything has not 
yet been granted them it is because they have not insisted upon it. 



Everyone knows that an attempt by the British Parliament to impose 
legislation upon these Dominions without their consent is an impossi- 
bility, and that if legislation upon an imperial, intercolonial question 
should again be necessary, it would be adopted with as full considera- 
tion of colonial opinion as if adopted by the colonies themselves. As a 
matter of fact all signs of the past generation indicate that such agree- 
ments upon intercolonial questions as may be necessary in the future 
will be reached by the methods in use among independent nations, nego- 
tiation and conference, rather than by legislation from above. The first 
step towards a proper British federation is a clear recognition of this 
fact with all that it logically involves, and the necessary first step to- 
wards forming a proper alliance of the English-speaking nations for 
peace is also a full recognition of the fact that it is to be formed, not 
between two independent nations, England and the United States, to 
which are attached certain dependences, but between seven nations who 
stand on the same footing in relation to their international interests and 
who are to be equal partners in due proportion in all that is done. 

2. If it be once admitted that the members of an alliance, whether a 
British Imperial Union or an English-speaking alliance for peace, are 
independent nations, it follows that internal legislation is not a natural 
consequence. It could undoubtedly be made possible by the terms of the 
union, but it would have to be artifically provided for by positive enact- 
ment. The natural method of settling internal questions would still be 
negotiation and conference, rendered no doubt especially easy by the 
existence of the alliance, but not changed in character. A heavy burden 
of proof rests on those who would create an imperial parliament for real 
legislation where none now exists. And that is not the way of safety. 
The greatest danger in any federal union is the temptation to impose 
legislation upon a local unit for which it is not ready, or to which it is 
strongly opposed. Within the British Empire the temptation is already 
at hand in the widely divergent views among the different units on the 
subject of intercolonial migration, and the danger of uniform legislation 
on the matter is unmistakable. The best result, the least dangerous to 
the union as a whole, which could follow such legislation, where feeling 
is strongly engaged, would be like that which has followed the violation 
of the principle of federal government in the Fifteenth Amendment to 
the Constitution of the United States, local nullification. Experience 
shows that even such subjects as internal commerce, involving the vexed 
question of protective tariffs, and naturalization are best left to local 
legislation. Why then create the risk? The natural and safe method 
is local independence and negotiation under the influence of common 
imperial public opinion, and the general principle which should be clearly 
recognized is that the primary and most essential object of a British 
federation or of an English-speaking alliance is not internal regulation 
but external unity. 

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3. The belief ihat an imperial parliament is necessary overlooks the 
experience of the United States. Avowedly one of the chief reasons, if 
not the chief, for considering an imperial parliament necessary is to se- 
cure the responsibility of the executive in the British way. Responsibil- 
ity secured in some way is a necessity. No constitution, no alliance or 
federation, no common understanding even, which disregards the matter 
can hope to obtain the sanction of democratic nations. But it does not 
follow that the British method of the responsible ministry is the only 
method of enforcing executive responsibility, or that any mechanical 
method need be provided. 

The British method of cabinet responsibility goes back to a time 
when the legislative assembly was still the best means of gathering and 
focusing public opinion. It is founded wholly on the theory that through 
the representatives elected by the people the will of the nation can best 
be declared and brought to bear upon the executive. In the eighteenth 
century when the responsible ministry was invented, this was still un- 
doubtedly the case. It is probable also that the American Congress has 
departed farther from this ideal of representative government than any 
other legislative assembly, but it merely stands in an advanced position 
on the road which all are following. In this fact consists a part of the 
value of American experience as a guide. It would be I think difficult to 
find any student of public afifairs in this country who believes that the 
public opinion of the United States is best ascertained through Con- 
gress, or that in the matter of general policy it is in ordinary cases 
brought to bear upon the executive by means by Congress. Such a 
student would be more likely to maintain that the opposite of this is 
true, and that in many cases during the last twenty years the executive 
has brought the majority opinion of the country to bear upon Congress. 
In reality while the president undoubtedly makes use of the knowledge 
of individual members of congress, he has other and better means of 
finding out the judgment of the nation, means unknown to the eighteenth 
century and increased almost miraculously in the nineteenth. On the 
morning after President Wilson's speech of February 3, 1917, on sub- 
marine warfare, the New York Times laid before its readers an im- 
pressive collection of opinion upon it from all parts of the country, of 
fifty-nine newspapers, including seventeen German-language papers, of 
sixteen governors of states and of two state legislatures, and of many 
men of prominence, including a number of leading German-Americans. 

In England itself in extremely important matters the public opinion 
of the nation has been ascertained and faithfully acted upon with no 
formal parliamentary action. This has even been done in the making 
and unmaking of cabinets. Twice since the war began the cabinet has 
been reconstructed, once involving the fall of the Prime Minister, with 
no preliminary declaration or mandate of parliament whatever. But, 
notwithstanding the comment of certain extreme radicals, it would be 



absurb to maintain that the present ministry of Mr. Lloyd George did 
not take office because of a public demand, or that it could maintain 
itself for a moment if it lost public confidence, whether parliament regis- 
tered the change or not. As a distinguished English publisist said at 
the time: "In the present instance the House has not been defied, but it 
has not been consulted. Mr. Lloyd George draws his strength from out- 
side the walls of parliament; he owes his elevation to a kind of informal 
and irregular, but unmistakably emphatic plebiscite. The House of 
Commons did not make him premier; it is doubtful whether it could un- 
make him." The truth is that parliament is no longer a channel through 
which the nation communicates with the government or declares what 
the government could not otherwise know, nor an organ for the forma- 
tion of a national judgment. Parliament has no longer any peculiar 
access to the springs of opinion, but itself finds out what the national 
judgment is just as the executive does, or the editor of a great news- 
paper, or his subscriber in a remote hamlet. 

When this has been said however the entire subject of executive 
responsibility has not been considered. It is still necessary that the pub- 
lic should be confident that the executive will not carry out a policy v 
opposed to its Avill., Here again the experience of the United States is 
enlightening, for it shows how a living democracy operates in just this 
matter as supplementing and modifying the written law. The President 
is supposed to appoint his cabinet to suit himself with no formal re- 
sponsibility for his selections, and no doubt presidents have shown con- 
siderable personal idiosyncracy in their appointments and considerable 
power of resistance to popular demand for changes in their cabinets. 
There have been so many cases, however, within comparatively recent 
memory, from Alger to Bryan, of members of the cabinet actually forced 
out of ofifice by the pressure of public opinion, whatever may have been 
the pretext upon which they resigned, that it is not going too far to say 
that the drift has been decided during the last generation towards re- 
ducing to a form the undoubted legal independence of the President in 
this matter. As to the President himself we have only to imagine an ex- 
treme case in which the will of the nation should unmistakably declare 
itself against a policy desired by him to be convinced that he would be 
obliged to abandon it. I do not mean by this the opposition of the polit- 
ical party opposed to the President's own, however loudly expressed, for 
this, so long as it is this only, he has the right to disregard, nor do I 
mean that the President is cut off from an attempt to educate the nation 
up to a policy which at the moment he is not trying to press, but I do 
mean to say that we have practically reached a point in our constitu- 
tional development where the President would never insist upon carry- 
ing through a policy against which the convinced will of the nation 
clearly declared. And every American will understand at once that the 
President would know what that will is and act upon it without the 
necessity of any congressional action. 

8 



And it is this, the convinced will of the nation, that, we must regard 
as the unit of authority in any international alliance, whatever form that 
alliance may take^ This is something behind which no form of inter- 
national government can go. This is as true of an alliance with an 
elaborate and written constitution, which attempts to vest in a central 
body a power of coercion, as of a mere understanding between nations 
which rests upon common ideals of conduct and policy and is managed 
by conference. The living forces of growth in a democratic world will 
make over any written constitution to suit themselves, as the constitution 
of the United States has been made over in so many ways without 
formal amendment. 

And what could be the practical operation of any plan with minutely 
worked out constitution? What could be the force by which it would do 
its work and which would enable it to maintain any power with which it 
might be invested? Before we can make any secure advance to a solu- 
tion of the problem of a workable international union, it must be recog- 
nized that the binding force of any alliance cannot be the right of coer- 
cion bestowed by legislation or by treaty upon a central body, but the 
common moral force, the moral unity of ideal and purpose, which must 
underlie any form which ingenuity can devise.; A nation, a member of 
an imperial or a Avorld alliance, cannot be coerced except by the force of 
opinion. Coercion by physical force would be the beginning of suicide. 
The nation which will not agree to the common judgment of other 
nations, which will not join in common action, by its refusal declares its 
independence and throws itself out of the world alliance. In other words 
it declares that it does not share in the common ideals and standards of 
conduct on which alone such an alliance can be securely based and 
therefore that it is not rightfully a member of it. It is because present 
experience gives rise to the hope that such common ideals and standards 
are shared by many nations that we may believe that a real alliance for 
future peace is possible. If they are not so shared, then again we must 
fall back upon the artificial methods of treaties and law codes as the 
best that we can do until they do arise. In that case, if an international 
league should create an executive in official and permanent form, some 
corresponding official form of removal might be necessary. For this 
purpose probably an adaptation of the recall would be the most prac- 
ticable, as in Art. V. of the Articles of Confederation of the United 
States adopted in 1778. 

But it is to be hoped that the dangers of this method may be avoided. 
The inveterate slowness of the mind to get out of the ruts which time 
has made is shown in the fact that nine-tenths of the discussion of an 
international alliance for peace is full of elaborate schemes of treaties 
and constitutions, of vested powers in parliaments and courts and cabi- 
nets. These are all survivals of a time out of which the war has swiftly 
brought us. They fail to recognize the fact that all things have been 



made new, and that we are now gathering in a daj' the harvest of a 
century since the democratic movement began. How plain is the fact, if 
we will but see it, that the great international alliance which now exists, 
which is managing the common affairs of nations on a scale never before 
thought possible, exists by virtue of no creative treaties or elaborate 
agreements, and that it is making the machinery of its operation as it 
goes on with its task. 

It is the stress of war no doubt which is creating new machinery, 
because the war has brought about conditions and demands which are 
new. But this new machinery is not for war alone, and it is equally true 
that it is a new age upon which the whole world will enter at the close 
of the war. What we are called upon now to see is how naturally and 
complete^ it is that the new machinery we are evolving meets the de- 
mands of the new world after the war. The problem of a union in a 
common international policy is already, as I have said, almost solved. 
To all intents and purposes such a uniori exists today with the necessary 
machinery. Only the slightest adjustment is necessary, mainly in the 
way of reaching an understanding, not in inventing forms. The largest 
reshaping of existing conditions. Avhatever be the outcome, seems to be 
demanded of the British Empire. 

The new machinery marks the way of the future and it also solves 
the problem of responsibility. It indicates clearly that the scheme for a 
cabinet of five members, with definitely assigned portfolios of foreign 
affairs, finances, army, navy and colonies, which the most recent and 
carefully made proposal for the federation of the British Empire, calls 
for, is not necessary, even for effective responsibility. Such a plan goes 
with the idea of internal government in elaborate detail. It is based 
upon the theory that such internal government must be provided for. 
If it be true that the main purpose of federation is unity of external 
policy, not internal regulation, it follows that such a cabinet is as un- 
necessary and out of place as an imperial parliament. The astonishing 
development of the council method for the management of all sorts of 
interests, and of international conference on a scale never before at- 
tempted, the gradual evolution of the war council of all the allies with 
universal public approval and a disposition to put under its control af- 
fairs of world wide import, show what should take the place of a cabinet, 
and events have proved that the responsibility of the council is real and 
immediate. It is exactly the responsibility of the American executive, 
Mr. Lloyd George certainly learned, as a consequence of his famous 
Paris speech, that membership in a council conference was not free from 
responsibility of a very effective kind, and it will not be forgotten that 
earlier still the conference proposal of an internatonal trade boycott of 
Germany after the war disappeared from view because of general dis- 
approval. 



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I have in this paper considered these two possible results of the 
war, British Imperial union, and an agreement in policy of all English- 
speaking nations, as if they were really the same in essence, and they 
are so indeed, at least if a natural and not a merely artificial outcome 
is to be obtained. The practical problems presented by these three 
possible results depend for solution one upon another in the order stated. 
If the British Empire, as it exists at present, could advance to a prac- 
tical, not a merely sentimental, recognition of the fact that it is a Com- 
monwealth of Nations and could bring itself to act in international 
relations in view of the fact, the problem of federation, of such federation 
as is necessary, would be almost instantly solved. It would be seen at 
once that the proper method of operation is not legislation but conference 
and that an elaborate machinery of parliament and cabinet need not be 
provided, but that the far simpler allied council would serve every pur- 
pose. The transformation of the British Empire actually into a common- 
wealth of nations would also render at once the problem of America's 
joining with it in a common international policy far easier of solution. 
To join in some arrangement however simple for a common policy with 
the British Empire as that has been historically known to us will seem 
to many a doubtful and difficult thing to do. To join with six inde- 
pendent English-speaking nations, standing upon a common footing of 
interest and influence, which are all alike peers of ours, would be a 
different matter. If such a common understanding of English-speaking 
nations among themselves is seen to be imminent and certain as a re- 
sult of the war, it can hardly be doubted but that other democratic na- 
tions, whose likeness of mind with us in the great problems of the recent 
past has already been demonstrated, will be attracted into the circle of 
this agreement and the union become a world league of peace. 

New Haven, Conn., 
December, 1917. 



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